According to Kenny Gorman, author of this recent article from The Next Web, there are changes to come for NoSQL databases. Gorman's article looks at the origins and purposes of NoSQL - MongoDB in particular, as it is the biggest representative of the movement - but the central argument is that there is an increasing and still-unmet need for performance to match the scalability of NoSQL databases. To that end, Gorman says:

It turns out that the public cloud or cheap, virtualized servers are not a good performance fit for a resource hungry sprawl of NoSQL data. And without a method for automating sharding as your data grows on a cloud-like infrastructure, you can get caught chasing endlessly after your data.

So how does an app get the scalability of the cloud but the performance of bare metal servers? In a sense, this is the Holy Grail quest of the data and compute world.

Companies are getting closer, Gorman says. Regardless, it's an interesting look at the state of NoSQL and the industry as a whole - the core problems faced by those working with NoSQL databases - and the possible direction of the future. Check out the
full article for details and conclusions, and see what you think.